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Terrapin in Shell, Maryland Style

Terrapin cooked in its shell with butter, flour, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Terrapin in Shell, Maryland Style

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Prepare a baking pan with dry gravel or sand.

  3. Kill or stun the terrapins, wash them, and place them back downward in the pan.

Bake and season

  1. Bake the terrapins for about 1 hour.

  2. Remove the belly shell using a towel, and take out the gall and entrails.

  3. Loosen the meat from the shell without removing it.

  4. Mix soft butter with a little flour, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  5. Drop a spoonful of the mixture into each terrapin and return them to the oven to cook the seasonings.

  6. Serve the terrapins in their shells on a folded napkin.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Terrapins
Form the main body of the dish, with their meat cooked in the shell.
Soft butter
Adds richness and moisture, carrying the seasonings into the meat as it melts.
Flour
Mixed with the butter to thicken it slightly so it holds together in the shell.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and meat.

The step that matters

Drop a spoonful of the mixture into each terrapin and return them to the oven to cook the seasonings.. The butter and flour mixture must cook long enough for the flour to lose its raw taste and the seasonings to blend into the meat; returning the terrapins to the oven heats the mixture through.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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